Patricia Riggen (born June 2, 1970) is a Mexican film director. She is best known for directing the 2007 film Under the Same Moon and the 2011 Disney Channel original film Lemonade Mouth.
Early life and career beginnings
Riggen was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco. While in her home country, she gained experience in journalism and writing for documentaries. Riggen obtained a degree in Communication Sciences from ITESO (Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente), Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara. Her thesis work was titled "Female Directors" and allowed her to interview the four important female film directors in Mexico at the time. Riggen had many jobs up and into her early 20s, she worked as a writer for her local Guadalajara newspaper, worked for producer Bertha Navarro, and collected research on the death industry for a Guillaremeo Del Toro documentary. In the late 90s, while working as Production Vice President of the short films department at the Mexican Film Institute, Riggen realized she wanted to go back to school.
She moved to New York City, where she received her master's degree in directing and screenwriting at Columbia University. Riggen noted, "I had to write and direct all my exercises and English is not my first language, so I started writing all these little movies that had no dialogue". While attending Columbia, she directed two short films The Cornfield (2002) and Family Portrait (2004), a documentary, the former film won a number of film festival awards. Family Portrait went on to win the Sundance Film Festival Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking.
Riggen found her way into writing and producing film, though she never thought she would end up as a director, comparing the chances of landing a career as a director to the chances of landing a career as an astronaut – slim to none.
Unhappy with producing, Riggen moved to New York to pursue a career in writing. She found herself as a director after directing one exercise.
Directing career
In 2007, Under the Same Moon, Riggen's first major film was released, starring Kate Del Castillo and America Ferrera. Riggen partnered up with writer and producer Ligiah Villabobos for the creation of Under the Same Moon. Riggen and Villabobos are both Mexican-born but relocated to the United States, and after taking many years to embrace their careers, they became extremely passionate about the work they produced.
Funding for the binational film Under the Same Moon, which was started in an American studio before Riggen made the decision to direct it independently, was done through both a funding from the Mexican government, and American financers. The film was very well received in 2007 at the Sundance Film Festival. Additionally, the film won the 2008 ALMA Outstanding Spanish Language Motion Picture award, as well as both the 2008 Best Director and Best Film Imagen Foundation Awards.
In 2010, she was chosen to direct the 2011 Disney Channel original film Lemonade Mouth. The film received over 7 million views on its premiere night and was well received. Riggen's work on this film was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Awards category of Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Children's Programs.
She has continued to direct feature films, with her next two being: Revolución (2010) and Girl in Progress (originally titled Ansiedad) starring Eva Mendes and Patricia Arquette. The film was released in 2012. Riggen believed Girl in Progress, could be a crossover movie that attracted many audiences as a coming of age story with a female lead that just happens to be Latina led, but found out it would be marketed exclusively to a Hispanic audience. She worked with this audience she was given and casting actresses who had their own fanbases, including Espinoza Paz.
Riggen's next film was The 33, a movie based on the 2010 Copiapó mining accident. The movie was first released in Chile in August 2015, coinciding with the five-year anniversary of the mine collapse. It was then released throughout Latin America before going to theaters in the U. S. and the rest of the world in November 2015.
When approached in 2010 to direct The 33, Riggen recounted her satisfaction that a woman would direct a film with such masculine subject matter. The 33 was shot in the Atacama Desert in Chile, as well as two mines in Colombia. Filmed in real salt mines over 35 days for 14-hour days 6 days a week, Riggen's goal was to have the cast and crew understand what being a miner is like.